Page - 134 - in Loss and Damage from Climate Change - Concepts, Methods and Policy Options

134 R.A. Jameset al. Fig.5.7 Ananalysis byHansen andStone, revisiting impacts in the IPCCWGII report to assess whether they can be linked to anthropogenic forcing.NoteBlue symbols show impacts which have been attributed to anthropogenic forcing with at least medium confidence, and confidence bars indicate the confidence level, with the colour of the confidence bars indicatingwhether the observed impact is related to changes in air temperature (red), ocean surface temperature (violet) or precipitation (blue). Impacts that are linked to regional climate trends, butwith little evidence for anthropogenic forcingare shown ingrey. SourceHansenandStone (2016) permafrostdegradation,bleachinganddeclineofcoral reefs, increasing forestfires, and the increase in shrub cover in Arctic regions. For impacts-related to precipi- tation, the evidence of anthropogenic forcing is still weak, and formany impacts, the evaluation of the relative contribution of anthropogenic climate change is still qualitative. It iscurrentlydifficult tomakequantitativestatementsdue to the limited availabilityof long-term,highqualitydataon thepotential (non-climatic)driversof change required toperformacomprehensiveanalysis. However, despite the remaininggapsandchallenges, there is alreadysubstantial evidence available about the attribution of climate change impacts (see Fig. 5.7), which can contribute to an understanding of how anthropogenic climate change is influencing losses and damages. The steps taken to integrate impacts research (Sect. 5.3.2)with climate research (Sect. 5.3.1), are promising, and several authors haveproposed frameworks, andprovidedexamples to illustrate, “end-to-end”attri-